The Benefits of Instructor-Led Training

Here at Arrow, we provide instructor-led training for a wide selection of vendors. These are delivered in classrooms, online courses or a combination of both ("hybrid classes").

It can prove difficult to release staff to attend a full five-day course - so do the benefits outweigh the investment of time and money?

The instructors often have years of experience in using complex products in the field, so they understand some of the pain that goes hand in hand with providing operational support.

This includes working under strict Change Control procedures, night shift, on-call or being thrown in at the deep end!

In addition to this, most vendors have clear ramp-up requirements. In other words, the instructors need to prove that their academic knowledge of the product is up to scratch.

This often involves attending training, passing exams and presenting course modules before the vendor. The latter is nerve-wracking I can tell you!

What delegates often find is that it's being able to ask instructors questions that is especially helpful. Perhaps a concept has been unclear in the delegate's mind for ages, but a short conversation frequently clarifies it!

Also, searching the vendor's website or using Google doesn't always provide the answers to technical problems, especially if the company environment has been configured non-standard or wrongly.

Asking the instructor random questions with the aid of a whiteboard can often prove invaluable.

We all learn by mistakes don't we?

A big plus to any course is being able to have hands-on practice in a lab environment where it is "safe" to make mistakes.

The instructor can advise upon or fix mistakes which otherwise would have been mystifying – or in the real world may have caused an outage!

The final word on return on investment in training is that a mis-configuration in the production environment can lead to inefficiencies, or security holes or outages which can cost the company huge sums.

These can often be avoided if the staff have been trained well and have hands-on experience using a "safe" lab environment.

The cost in time and money of a training course will be far outweighed by reducing inefficiencies, faster problem resolution and reduced service outages.

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About Arrow

Arrow is a global supply channel partner to over 100,000 original equipment manufacturers, contract manufacturers, and commercial customers, in sectors ranging from aerospace to automotive, telecommunications to transportation.

Arrow’s contribution feeds into everything these companies produce, from cars to coffee makers to cable boxes. Consequently, Arrow touches everyday life for individuals across the world, at least twenty times a day on average.

Arrow is a Fortune 150 company and recognised as one of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies. Arrow operates in over 460 locations in 56 countries, with 18,500 employees serving 100,000 customers worldwide. Here in the UK and Ireland, we have over 600 employees working out of seven locations.